Stay Tuned: TV Preview: ‘The Long Road Home’

Tuesday

Oct 31, 2017 at 11:07 AMOct 31, 2017 at 11:07 AM

Melissa Crawley More Content Now

National Geographic’s latest scripted series, “The Long Road Home,” chronicles the events of April 4, 2004, when the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood was ambushed in Sadr City, Baghdad, during the Iraq War. The action moves between the soldiers who are fighting to survive until the extraction team arrives and their families at Fort Hood who are anxiously waiting for news. The split focus personalizes a high stakes battle story. War is as much about those who are left behind as it is about those on the front lines and “The Long Road Home” gives them a voice.

Adapted from Martha Raddatz’s bestselling nonfiction account, the screen version of “The Long Road Home” reveals the soldiers’ internal thoughts and motivations quickly but with less context than the book. In one early monologue, Staff Sergeant Miltenberger (Jeremy Sisto) sounds cryptically prophetic when he responds to a soldier who is disappointed about the lack of action his unit has seen so far: “What do you know about it? War? Ever been shot at? Ain’t nothing out there like you think it is … There’s no glory out there. No heroes. It’s just death and rot.” It’s not the subtlest approach to establish a truth about battle but it has an emotional impact. In another scene, Lieutenant Colonel Valesky (Michael Kelly), who leads the division’s takeover of Sadr City from the previous command, tells his skeptical men they are going to do “great things” during their year-long posting. The juxtaposition between despair and hope is effective, if not as complex as it could be.

The story portrays the tedium of deployment but also the tension that exists below the surface of a seemingly calm town. While the 1st Cavalry performs routine sanitation cleanups in Sadr City, an undesirable job that does little for troop morale, the city’s residents are frustrated and unsettled. Supporters of a local leader are demanding the Americans leave and their number is growing while locals tell the Americans that their promise of protection means little. It’s a tense situation that eventually explodes into chaos when the 1st Cavalry’s convoy is ambushed.

The ambush scene is filmed from the perspective of the soldiers who are in the only vehicle that makes it through the gunfire and black smoke. They don’t know what happened to the vehicles behind them and neither do we. This suspense is heightened with close-up shots of soldiers trying to get a grip on their fear. When the vehicle turns back to retrieve the rest of the unit, the destruction is revealed and the heart of the story begins. Nineteen men must find shelter and survive until an extraction team arrives. The problem is that the trackers which would normally be connected to tell command their location had not yet been attached.

Framing the events of “Black Sunday” as three parts that make up a larger story of heroism, “The Long Road Home” highlights the bravery of all sides in a military conflict.

“The Long Road Home” premieres on Nov. 7 on National Geographic.

— Melissa Crawley is the author of “Mr. Sorkin Goes to Washington: Shaping the President on Television’s ‘The West Wing’” and the recently released “The American Television Critic.” She has a Ph.D. in media studies and is a member of the Television Critics Association. To comment on Stay Tuned, email her at staytuned@outlook.com or follow her on Twitter at @MelissaCrawley.